• Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism by James T. Hamilton. "In riveting detail, Hamilton meticulously examines the storied history of investigative journalism in America, chronicles its current malaise, and makes a convincing case that pouring resources into gumshoe reporting makes economic sense for sclerotic news organizations. Why? Because readers hunger for more of it and are willing to pay to read it." ~Walter V. Robinson, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist and Editor-at-Large at the Boston Globe. Much of Hamilton's data comes from the files of the group Investigative Reporters & Editors. (Thanks, Steve Weinberg)
• Open Payments database (a federal program that collects and makes information public about financial relationships between the health care industry, physicians, and teaching hospitals--a good place to spot conflicts of interest)
• Journalists Shouldn’t Be Fired for Investigating Their Own Publications (Danielle Tcholakian, Longreads, 2-6-18) Newsweek reporters Celeste Katz and Josh Saul, and their editors Bob Roe and Kenneth Li, were investigating "without fear or favor" why their office was raided by investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney on January 18, quickly turning around a story. They collaborated on two more stories that held their own company accountable, joined by their colleague Josh Keefe. Then on February 5, Katz, Saul, Roe and Li were abruptly fired. 'Another reporter, Matthew Cooper, tendered a letter of resignation to Pragad, criticizing the magazine’s “reckless leadership.” “It’s the installation of editors, not Li and Roe, who recklessly sought clicks at the expense of accuracy, retweets over fairness, that leaves me most despondent not only for Newsweek but for other publications that don’t heed the lessons of this publication’s fall,” Cooper wrote in the letter, which he shared on Twitter.'
• Prosecutor's statement at Larry Nassar sentencing "Thank God we had these journalists. And that they exposed this truth." (CNN Staff, 1-24-18) "[W]e as a society need investigative journalists more than ever. What finally started this reckoning and ended this decadeslong cycle of abuse was investigative reporting. Without that first Indianapolis Star story in August of 2016, without the story where Rachael came forward publicly shortly thereafter, he would still be practicing medicine, treating athletes and abusing kids."
• Story about genetic testing company’s problems shows how good reporting stands up to criticism (Joseph Burns, Covering Health, AHCJ, 11-17-17) "In December 2016, Charles Piller (@​cpiller), the west coast editor for Stat, reported that a genetic test to identify patients who could be prone to addiction lacked a firm scientific basis. With an eye-opening headline, “Called ‘hogwash,’ a gene test for addiction risk exploits opioid fears,” the article raised important questions about the Proove Opioid Risk test from Proove Biosciences in Irvine, Calif. See also Editor details the challenges of covering genetic testing companies that make dubious claims (Joseph Burns, AHCJ 11-15-17).
• A toast to undercover journalism’s greatest coup, when reporters bought a bar (Jackie Spinner, Columbia Journalism Review, 1-26-18) "In a 25-part series, Sun-Times writer Zay N. Smith (known as Norty when he tended bar), Sun-Times reporter Pam Zekman, and Bill Recktenwald, the lead investigator for the watchdog Better Government Association, detailed a Chicago underworld of bribery, skimming, and tax evasion. The series ultimately led to indictments for a third of the city’s electrical inspectors, and major reforms in city and state codes."
• This Is What’s Missing From Journalism Right Now (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones, 8-17-16) And a slightly scary experiment to try and fix it. "Stories that truly reveal something about the way power works are not going to happen in this framework. They take time (way more time than can be justified economically) and stability. They take reporters and editors who can trust their jobs will be there, even if money is tight or powerful folks are offended. They are driven by a desire for journalism to have impact, not just turn a profit." ... 'At the time, however, some powerful, mostly East Coast editors turned up their noses at the “Chicago-style” tactics that Recktenwald and Zekman used to expose voter fraud and nursing home abuse to lawyers and doctors faking accidents for insurance claims.'
• The ultimate guide to searching CIA’s declassified archives (Emma Best, Muckrock, 9-22-17) Looking to dig into the Agency’s 70 year history? Here’s where to start.
• Online privacy for journalists by Michael Dagan (how to safeguard your communications, browsing, and data, from any unwanted "big brother" or intruder--indirectly how to protect a source. Proceeds go to Electronic Frontier Foundation)
• Californians Aware (CalAware) (The Center for Public Forum Rights). Helping citizens, public servants and journalists keep Californians aware of critical facts and choices through access to public records, freedom to speak, assemble, or report, freedom from fear for whistleblowing, etc.
• Center for Public Integrity
• Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) Watchdog
• Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
• The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity
• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog group that uses legal actions to target government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests (see their blog, research and investigations, video, and legal filings). See CREW's Scandals and Scoundrels.
• Fix the Court Politics has infected the Supreme Court appointment process. We don't care which party created the problem or how or when it began, but we believe our elected officials should fix it. Here's how. Tell your elected representatives that the justices shouldn't serve for life. Petition the court to adopt the same disclosure rules that the rest of the government follows. Urge he judiciary to allow broadcast media in their courtrooms.
• Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) Supporting investigative reporting projects around the world.
• The Innocence Project
• International Reporting Project (IRP, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University)
• Investigate West, a new model for investigative journalism about the Pacific Northwest
• Investigating Disability Issues (National Center on Disability and Journalism)
• Investigative News Network (INN) (advancing sustainability and excellence in nonprofit journalism)
• Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) Must-join for investigative journalists.
• Investigative Reporting Workshop (American University School of Communication)
• The Marshall Project (nonprofit journalism about criminal justice)
• The Media Consortium (supporting powerful, passionate, independent journalism)
• Mongabay.org (originally a source on tropical forests; now raising awareness about social and environmental issues relating to forests and other ecosystems)
• MuckReads (ProPublica's ongoing collection of watchdog reporting by other news organizations)
• Muckrock, a U.S. -based organization that assists anyone in filing governmental requests for information through the Freedom of Information Act, then publishes the returned information on its website and encourages journalism around it.
• New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR), website: The Eye
• OpenSecrets.org (Center for Responsive Politics)
• Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
• Project on Government Oversight (POGO), an independent nonprofit U.S. watchdog organization that investigates and seeks to expose corruption and other misconduct
• ProPublica (journalism in the public interest -- a nonprofit investigative journalism organization)
• Public Citizen (Washington watchdog group, protecting health, safety, and democracy)
• Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University (site features these topics: interracial marriage,women's march, human trafficking & modern-day slavery, global inequality, race & justice). See also The Justice Brandeis Law Project (examining systemic flaws in the criminal justice system)
• Watchdog News (@​Watchdogorg, Facebook)
• Word Has It (Project Word's blog). Here's how Project Word came about.
• The Reluctant Memoirist (Suki Kim, New Republic, July-Aug.2016) An investigative journalist returns from an undercover mission in North Korea to write and publish There Is No Us: My Time With the Sons of North Korea’s Elite, which she sees as investigative journalism but which her publisher calls "a memoir." “I think calling it a memoir trivializes my reporting,” she tells her editor. "My work, though literary and at times personal, was a narrative account of investigative reporting. I wasn’t simply trying to convey how I saw the world; I was reporting how it was seen and lived by others."
• Extra! Extra! IRE's guide to latest investigative reporting
• Loosening Lips: The Art of the Interview (Eric Nalder, PBS) In 2004, investigative journalist Eric Nalder interviewed a whistleblower from ConocoPhillips, the nation's third-largest oil company. Nader's investigation revealed that oil industry safety nets were being undermined. EXPOSÉ episode, "A Sea of Troubles." featured Nalder's investigation into the enforcement of safety regulations on oil tankers which uncovered serious safety lapses and cover-ups. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Eric Nalder is known for his ability to get people to open up and tell all they know, on the record.
• This Is What’s Missing From Journalism Right Now (Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones, 8-17-16) "Conservatively, our prison story cost roughly $350,000. The banner ads that appeared in it brought in $5,000, give or take. If 0.02 percent of the people who visit the site by the end of September sign up as sustainers, we will have proven something really important about how to keep in-depth journalism alive." Here's more about the story: • Inside Mother Jones‘ monster investigation of private prisons (David Uberti, CJR, 6-24-16) "The Mother Jones senior reporter was on assignment at a private prison in Louisiana, working as a guard. Conditions at the facility were deplorable. A poorly-trained staff lacked the support to respond to growing violence. And one of Bauer’s colleagues, who had no knowledge of Bauer’s primary job, told him that an investigative journalist should shed light on the facility’s rampant mismanagement and horrid treatment of inmates." Bauer’s grisly retelling of his time at the facility—a 35,000-word opus accompanied by a six-part video series, with a ppodcast produced with Reveal to come next week—confirms many of our worst fears about the private prison industry.

You will find various specialized types of writing and journalism (automotive, trucking, snowsports, animal, etc.) under Specialty writing. A number of organizations will be found under Local and regional organizations.

Embargoes
• How the FDA Manipulates the Media (Charles Seife, Scientific American, Oct. 2016) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been arm-twisting journalists into relinquishing their reportorial independence, our investigation reveals. Other institutions are following suit. "This kind of deal offered by the FDA—known as a close-hold embargo—is an increasingly important tool used by scientific and government agencies to control the behavior of the science press....But for [a particular] breach of secrecy, nobody outside the small clique of government officials and trusted reporters would have known that the journalists covering the agency had given up their right to do independent reporting....For example, the FDA assures the public that it is committed to transparency, but the documents show that, privately, the agency denies many reporters access—including ones from major outlets such as Fox News—and even deceives them with half-truths to handicap them in their pursuit of a story....By using close-hold embargoes and other methods, the FDA, like other sources of scientific information, are gaining control of journalists who are supposed to keep an eye on those institutions. The watchdogs are being turned into lapdogs."
• Embargo on press releases, rationale for (PLoS). Breaking an embargo is a journalistic no-no, with good reason.
• The Embargo Should Go (Vincent Kiernan, Inside Higher Education, 8-21-06). The system under which top journals share findings with reporters doesn't serve journalism, science or the public interest. Kiernan is the author of Embargoed Science
• Should Reporters Have Agreed To The Vertex Embargo? (Matthew Harper, Forbes, 6-24-14) A reporter's final thoughts on accepting an embargo agreement on writing about a new drug.
• Death to the Embargo (Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, 12-17-08)
• The embargo and business journalists (Sabrina Husain, Society of American Business Writers, May 2012)

Other sites and resources for
journalists and news junkies

• Ad blockers. Online publications fight back against ad blockers (Carl Harrison, Multibriefs, industry-specific news briefs, 11-17-16)
• All the News That Seemed Unfit to Print (Peter Carlson, WaPo, 8-7-07) The Weekly World News was a sleazy tabloid that covered events that seemed to occur in a parallel universe. The most creative newspaper in American history, the Weekly World News broke the story that Elvis faked his death and was living in Kalamazoo, Mich.
• Alternet.org (a progressive activist news service and a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, whose aim is to "inspire citizen action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues")
• A Manifesto (Jason Pontin, Technology Review, May/​June 2009) Newspapers and magazines won't vanish. But they will change.
• Another One Bites the Dust: Can Independent Web Journalism Survive? (Dorian Benkoil, MediaShift, 2-12-18) "The solo blogger or small team can still make a go of it, if they stay as focused on the business aspects as the editorial mission." The Awl, DNAInfo, Gothamist, BuzzFeed (struggling), Mashable (acquired cheaply)...see where the troubles lie, and why. Great visual.
• An Arizona school district kept a secret blacklist for decades. A reporter found it. (Hank Stephenson, CJR, 1-23-18) "After three hours, I was the only reporter left in the room. Sometimes that’s all it takes....The credit for exposing the blacklist belongs to the school board member who chased this story for years, and the superintendent who owned up to the district’s mistakes."
• Artisanal Journalism (Structure of News, on (Re)Structuring Journalism, 6-11-12). Talking about data structure and site design is not as sexy as discussing wonderful tales of narrative journalism. But it’s just as important, sez this post.
• Ask a Reporter archives Read how New York Times reporters have answered students' questions, or see how different reporters have answered frequently asked questions.
• ASNE archives (American Society of Newspaper Editors)
• Anataomy of a News Segment (Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish, video. 1-29-10)
• Awards, grants, fellowships, and competitions (Writers and Editors)

• Artisanal Journalism (Structure of News, on (Re)Structuring Journalism, 6-11-12). Talking about data structure and site design is not as sexy as discussing wonderful tales of narrative journalism. But it’s just as important, sez this post.
• The assassination of a journalist. The killing of Gauri Lankesh (iddhartha Deb, CJR, Winter 2018) Gauri Lankesh was an outspoken left-wing journalist working in an India that has become one of the world’s most dangerous countries to be a reporter. What the assassination of a Bangalore journalist says about media complacency in the face of Hindu nationalism’s violent rise in India. In spite of a lack of coordination of investigators, certain patterns have emerged that connect the killings of journalists.

• The Basics: Principles of Newswriting (Ben Yagoda)
•Benjamin C. Bradlee (Academy of Achievement). One of several interviews of journalists and about journalism.
• The Best Damn Job in the Whole Damn World (Roger Ebert, 4-3-09)
• Billionaires gone wild (Alex Pareene, CJR, Winter 2018) The American media landscape, like the rest of the country, is being reshaped by the whims of the ultra-rich. It is one thing—an infuriating thing, granted—to lose your job because of 'the market.' ...But when your livelihood is disrupted because of the whims of one powerful person—when the invisible hand is replaced by one very visible and shockingly capricious one—it is a much more bewildering experience. And it is one more journalists can expect to experience in the near future, as the economic power of the 0.01 percent increases and the revenue models underpinning traditional news-gathering shops break down."
•Bloody shoes worn by Orlando doctor reveal power of detail (Roy Peter Clark, Poynter, Storytelling, 6-16-16). Editorial he uses to illustrate his point: A Flower for the Graves, an editorial by Gene Patterson. See also Fighting for Life 50 Floors Up, With One Tool and Ingenuity (Jim Dwyer, NY Times, 10-9-01)
•Blue Plate Special.net (by Jay Rosen, his students at NYU, and other recruits from around the Web). A Blue Plate Special is a mix of blog posts, interviews, and informational features on a single subject, and quite a bit about blogging.

Can We Tape? A Reporter's Recording Guide A Practical Guide to Taping Phone Calls and In-Person Conversations in the 50 States and D.C. (a state-by-state guide). (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press)
• Can We Talk (Thomas L. Friedman, OpEd, NY Times, 7-17-10) On the dangers of political correctness.

• Contently (powering the next generation of publishing). Described by Columbia Journalism Review as a new platform to connect journalists and publishers . "Contently aims to help journalists to build their brand online and connect them with publishers looking for writers." The Contently platform is said to "streamline your editorial calendar and add efficiency to content creation--for agencies and high-volume publishers." The Content Network "empowers professional journalists and bloggers to build careers doing what they love." Through that network, Contently publishers can "scale up freelance talent for projects and ongoing work with our vetted Network of magazine-quality writing talent." We'll see how it all works out later. Report on your experiences!
• The cost of reporting while female ( Anne Helen Petersen, CJR, Winter 2018) The work of a journalist is to be accessible, discerning, and persistent. For a woman, this also makes her a target. "The first time I was told I should go die a slow and painful death, it was because I had written about Kristen Stewart."
• Covering children and trauma (PDF, Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma)
• Covering Indian Country: How an Outsider Gets In (Steve Magagnini, Nieman Reports,
• Covering various beats (Slim guides from the Association of Health Care Journalist, on Covering obesity, medical research, hospitals, the quality of health care, the health of local nursing homes, health in a multicultural society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website and data resources). Also online, archived issues of HealthBeat
• Covering tragedies (PDF, Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma)

5 Ways to Get People to Contribute Good Content for Your Site. Mallary Jean Tenore (Poynter Online, 11-11-10) gives advice on getting good user-generated content (crowdsourcing, or community editorial): "Master the 'fine art of the prompt'; understand what motivates contributors (and that "your content providers are not necessarily your content consumers") and reward them.

• Generation J Community (SPJ, section for journalism school grads)
• The golden age of computer-assisted reporting is at hand (Mathew Ingram, Nieman Lab, 5-20-09) A little dated, but just to give a sense of recent history!
• Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption) (Paul Starr, New Republic, 3-4-09)
• Help a Reporter (HARO) (the jouralists' side: Post a query)
• How News Happens: A Study of the News Ecosystem of One American City (Pew Resarch Journalism Project, 1-11-10)
• How we're working with reporters from around America to cover class and inequality (Alissa Quart and Jessica Reed, The Guardian, 6-26-17) The national media failed to cover large swathes of the US pre-election, while rural voices have been quieted by the decimation of local news. Our On The Ground project aims to remedy these issues
• Idea Lab (Media Shift)
• If a Pharmaceutical Company Publishes a Magazine, Is it Journalism? (Michael Schulson, Undark, 2-12-18) That’s the nagging question for LeapsMag, a new science publication underwritten by Bayer, the pharmaceutical and agricultural sciences conglomerate. "I chose not to write for Leaps, concerned that taking money from Bayer would compromise my ability to report on the company." “It was clear that, yes, they did want an independent publication, as long as it didn’t criticize ethical issues that touched on Bayer.” (Read the comments, too.)
• In Search of Equity: the Media Consortium Reinvents Itself (Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, Idea Lab, 9-20-17) The big drivers of national political life—immigration, education, health care—all begin with local stories. To best tell the story of our times we need to be able to tell these stories where they start. The Media Consortium was founded in 2006 to create a collaborative network of self-sustaining independent progressive journalism outlets. The good news is that this work has succeeded. After a dozen years, the Media Consortium will be sunsetting so that a new, stronger organization can rise in its place. The big drivers of national political life—immigration, education, health care—all begin with local stories. To best tell the story of our times we need to be able to tell these stories where they start. Those best equipped to tell these community-specific stories are reporters living in those communities. Here’s what we imagine as the next iteration of the organization that is currently called the Media Consortium: The new organization will be a network of news outlets dedicated to building a racially equitable independent media ecosystem. Consortium members will center the voices of culturally-specific communities, promote local/​national partnerships, and work collaboratively to grow impact.
• The Inheritance (Mark Bowden's story in Vanity Fair about Arthur Sulzberger and the NY Times, 3-30-09) With a doomsday clock ticking for newspapers as we know them, no one has more at stake than fourth-generation New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who is scrambling to keep his family’s prized asset alive. Some see him as a lightweight cheerleader, others as the last, best defender of quality journalism. Talking to company insiders, the author examines the nexus of dynasty and character that has brought the 57-year-old Sulzberger to the precipice.
• IRE Tipsheets (Investigative Reporters & Editors)

Ledes and Sewer FatWall Street Journal writer Barry Newman: 'like all reporters, I’m an exception' (Barry Newman, The Guardian, 4-23-15) The journalist behind more than 400 Wall Street Journal front-page features reveals his techniques for opening stories – and shows how he made a riveting read out of fat in sewers. The part about ledes is okay; the story about what a problem fat is in New York's sewers is fascinating (and its implications for what fat might be doing in your body will probably stick with you).

Magazines
• Magazines and Their Web sites (a Columbia Journalism Review survey and report by Victor Navasky with Evan Lerner, March/​April 2010). And Tangled Web (their article about the CJR survey of practices at magazines). It is like the Wild West out there. Advertising is king; there is little copyediting online; under Web editors there may be little or no fact-checking; speed is a priority, so print standards may be abandoned; corrections may be made with no acknowledgment of the original error; print may reach a smaller audience but still has more aura of prestige. Some thoughts: “We migrated from a print publication supplemented with online articles to an online publication supplemented with print editions.” “The Web site is an extension of the print magazine, although it reaches far more people.” “I see four missions for the Web site: to build community; to allow us to do things, such as interactive lists and video, that we can’t do in print; to speed news to the reader faster than the print product; and ultimately, of course, to make money…”
• Do-It-Yourself Magazines, Cheaply Slick (Ashlee Vance, NY Times, 3-29-09)
• Magazines Cross the Digital Divide (Keach Hagey, WSJ, 1-18-13). Print publishers have a long, love-hate relationship with electronic media, dating back to the dawn of the internet. Buffeted by declining advertising, magazines are turning to tablet computers and digital editions to boost circulation revenue. In doing so, they are hoping to reset decades of subscription discounting.
• Magazine Ad Slump Sends Publishers Into Freefall (Tim Mulaney, Bloomberg, 2008)
• A Magazine Startup Checklist (William Dunkerley, STRAT, 12-13-10)
• STRAT: The Newsletter of Print and Online Magazine Publishing Strategy
• Mr. Magazine.com (Samir Husni's blog)

• A mission for journalism in a time of crisis (The Guardian, 11-16-17) In a turbulent era, the media must define its values and principles, writes Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner. This part is particularly apt right after the U.S. Republicans passed their big Tax Reform gift to the wealthy: "Skyrocketing inequality between the rich and poor has bred resentment at the political and economic establishment. In October it was revealed that the world’s super-rich now hold the greatest concentration of wealth for 120 years – many of them taking elaborate steps to avoid tax in the process, as the Paradise Papers showed." See Paradise Papers leak reveals secrets of the world elite's hidden wealth (Juliette GarsideThe Guardian, 11-5-17)

• Nearly 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic, 5-4-11). These must-reads are his personal picks for the best nonfiction of 2010. Happy reading!
• A Nebraskan and a New Yorker cross swords over ‘coastal bias’ in reporting (Ryan Bell, CJR, 2-7-18) 'The rise of digital publishing, such as Slate, was supposed to herald a new age in journalism where place would be of little importance. Reporters could work from anywhere in the country, so long as there was a good internet connection. Digital newspapers and magazines did create a bump in the industry, from 77,900 jobs in 2007 to 206,700 in 2017, but those reporters were stationed in the big cities. “Their reporters, an admirable lot,” wrote Jack Shafer for Politico, “can parachute into Appalachia or the rural Midwest on a monthly basis and still not shake their provincial sensibilities: Reporters tote their bubbles with them.” It was a matter of time before a local reporter would take a swing to pop that bubble.'
• New American Media (expanding the news lens through ethnic media)
• News Feature v. Narrative: What’s the Difference? (Rebecca Allen, Nieman Storyboard, 1-9-06). Excellent explanation and examples.
• News Gets New Life When Exhumed From the Morgue (Jeff Roth, Erika Allen, NY Times Q&A, 5-20-14)
Jeff Roth takes us on a basement tour of The New York Times’s archives, known as the morgue, explains how old clips in morgue are repurposed for an obituary.
• NewsLab: Resources Many helpful links
• NewsLab: Tools Many helpful links
• Newsletters. Here’s how to build a better newsletter, according to a bunch of self-professed newsletter nerds (Christine Schmidt, Nieman Lab, 1-24-18) In the unquenchable quest for greater interaction with readers, journalists have become nerds for newsletters--talking about best practices for A/​B testing, actually landing in inboxes, and using email newsletters to build community. "Have a voice, tone, mission and audience in mind for every email you send."
• Newswise Theme Wires Calendar. Professional journalists can sign up to receive Newswise news alerts, access to embargoed news, and contact info for expert sources. There is a Daily Wire, a Science Wire, a Medical Wire, a Life Wire, and a Business Wire

The Open Notebook. The story behind the best science stories. For example:Seth Mnookin follows a family battling a rare genetic disease (Sara Carpenter) Mnooking set out to learn: What do you do when you learn your child could die from a disease with no other known sufferers? The story: One of a Kind (New Yorker, 7-21-14) What do you do if your child has a condition that is new to science? when you learn your child could die from a disease with no other known sufferers?

The Paper Trail Through History (Jennifer Schuessler, NY Times on Books, 12-16-12). Ben Kafka in his book The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork, "traces the modern age of paperwork to the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which guaranteed citizens the right to request a full accounting of the government." (He writes of one clerk in France who in 1794 is said to have saved hundreds of people from the guillotine by disappearing the relevant paperwork.) Lisa Gitelman, who is writing a book about the history of documents, points out that photocopying (as Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers), is one aspect of document leaking that historians have not paid attention to, but “Even though we think of copying now as perfunctorily ripping something off, [Ellsberg] was expressing himself by Xeroxing,”

Photographers: Fight for your rights (NewsLab guide) Confrontations that impair the constitutional right to make images are becoming more common. To fight the abuse of your right to free expression, you need to know your rights to take photographs and the remedies available if your rights are infringed.

• Reporting on Suicide website. Download PDF of Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide (PDF, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention)
• Right-wing media obsesses over FBI text message story; hours later it's debunked (Oliver Darcy, CNN Media, 2-7-18) The "narrative ricocheted through the pro-Trump media universe in what has become a pattern for stories that seem to call the investigation into Trump into question, or suggest that the investigation into Clinton wasn't thorough. The misleading messaging was delivered to millions of people through Fox News' airwaves and through other pro-Trump media, which went into overdrive. Articles about the text led websites from the Drudge Report and Breitbart to InfoWars and the Gateway Pundit....Fox News continued to discuss the story on its air Wednesday afternoon, even after multiple outlets -- including the Wall Street Journal, which is controlled by Fox head Rupert Murdoch -- had reported contrary information."
• Riptide: An oral history of the epic collision between journalism and digital technology, from 1980 to the present (Digital Riptide, September 2013). Three veterans of digital journalism and media — John Huey, Martin Nisenholtz, and Paul Sagan, Fellows at the Joan Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School — interviewed dozens of people who played important roles in the intersection of media and technology — from CEOs to coders, journalists to disruptors. Riptide is the result: more than 50 hours of video interviews and a narrative essay that traces the evolution of digital news from early experiments to today. It’s what really happened to the news business.
• The Rise and Fall of Liz Smith, Celebrity Accomplice (John Leland, NY Times, 7-28-17) She was the most powerful gossip columnist in
the 1980s. The price of admission, she discovered, was often uncritical reverence. Celebrities learned they could count on Ms. Smith. A tabloid celebrity herself, she could turn anyone into a star overnight. Until she couldn’t.

The Smoking Gun (uncovers public documents on crimes, celebrities, politicians, and the FBI)

Solutions Journalism. Here's an example, which Tina Rosenberg recommended: Seeking Safety, a series in the Fayetteville Observer, which serves as a model for solutions journalism (in this case to address the crime problem in Fayetteville): "Investigative reporter Greg Barnes spent a year traveling around the southeast writing about what other cities were doing that had evidence of success. No advocacy, very strong journalism, big impact."

State of the News Media 2011. The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that people are spending more time with news than ever before, but are increasingly doing so online. Of all the traditional media, the audience for AM/​FM radio has remained most stable. Interesting report.

• Top 30 Job Sites for Careers in Broadcast Journalism (Molly Canfield, Journalism Journeyman 6-14-11)
• The Transformation of NPR (Jennifer Dorroh, American Journalism Review, Oct./​Nov. 2008) On NPR's reinvention as a multimedia, multiplatform force.
• Trust Index (2018 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report) Surveys show trust in government and the media falling, compared with nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and business. U.S. trust in media diverges along voting lines, with a 34 point difference between Republicans (low trust) and Democrats (whose trust in government has declined since presidential election).
• Truthout Has Unionized (Maya Schenwar and Matt Renner, Truthout, 9-14-09). First online-only news site to unionize.
• Two dozen freelance journalists told CJR the best outlets to pitch (Carlett Spike, CJR, 2-1-17) She comments on Mel Magazine, Pacific Standard, Los Angeles Times, Quartz, The Guardian, and The New Yorker.

A Vanishing Journalistic Divide (David Carr, NY Times, 10-10-10). "Open up Gawker, CNN, NPR and The Wall Street Journal on an iPad and tell me without looking at the name which is a blog, a television brand, a radio network, a newspaper. They all have text, links, video and pictures. The new frame around content is changing how people see and interact with the picture in the middle." Carr goes on to point out what traditional journalism does that the others don't and why we should be glad it still exists.

• What a billionaire can do for a paper (Hint: It’s not always good) (David Beard, Poynter, 2-12-18) What new L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Siong can learn from Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post.
• What type of journalist are you? (Nicole Smith Dahmen, CJR, 1-24-17) "Historically, journalists were divided into two groups: the Disseminators, who favor detachment and objectivity, and the Interpretives, who favor involvement and advocacy. By the early 2000s, two new roles emerged: the Adversarials, who show a more combative outlook toward government and business, and the Populist Mobilizers, who reflect a movement toward civic journalism that emphasizes giving ordinary citizens a voice." Dahmen, Karen McIntyre, and Jesse Abdenour conducted a study of more than 1,300 newspaper and online journalists across the US which showed "the emergence of a new journalistic ideology: the Contextualist...this new group of journalists places high value on acting with social responsibility, contributing to society’s well being, and alerting the public to both threats and opportunities, while still holding firm to journalism’s responsibility to portray the world accurately....While conventional news stories focus on conveying information (a just-the-facts approach), contextual news stories provide a deeper understanding of the news, thereby providing a big-picture approach."
• Who killed Time Inc.? (Howard R. Gold, CJR, 2-1-18) "No one has figured it out because there’s nothing to figure out. It’s like the horse trying to figure out the automobile."
• Why it is so hard for foreign journalists to get published? (Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, Science Writers, NASW, 2-8-18) Why don't foreign bylines appear more often in such publications? In a roundtable conversation conducted by email, editors and freelance writers were asked about the challenges writers face in working across international boundaries.
• Women in Journalism oral history interviews (Washington Press Club Foundation) Links to some transcripts.
• Who Owns What? (Columbia Journalism Review's guide to what the major media companies own)
• Why Journalists Make Mistakes & What We Can Do About Them (Mallary Jean Tenore, Poynter, 7-7-10)
• You Can’t Sell News by the Slice (Michael Kinsley, NY Times, Oped, 2-9-09)
• Your Tax Dollars at Work (Liena Zagare and Ben Smith, Columbia Journalism Review, Spring 2017) Move legal notices online. "Part of the explanation for the failure of local digital media is the same litany of woes faced by old media: a struggling display ad business; the complete dominance of Facebook and Google, which have absorbed most of the growth in digital ads; and the inherent difficulties in building the scale that powers many digital media businesses through deep coverage for a niche audience. But we would suggest there’s another uncomfortable and underreported reason for the struggles of new community news startups, as well as the survival of a kind of zombie community print press that soldiers on increasingly without an audience: the major, quiet subsidy to print community papers, which comes in two basic forms — legislation requiring that legal notices be published in print, and advertising by government agencies. [Emphasis added.] ...If you want to reach local residents, and alert them to something of civic interest, online community publishers, with their engaged audiences, can do this far better than their print counterparts—and provide fodder for search engines on the side. “State laws should reflect changing times,” NY state representative Nily Rozic told us. “When posting notices about government or private sector activities, important information should expand its reach to local digital media, meeting readers where they are.”

What are some alternatives, as the advertising-pays-for-print-journalism model stops working? Have combined this section with an updated version of a blog entry first published in 2009. You'll find it here: Will journalism survive? In what form?

• How 'deceptive' sponsored news articles could be tricking readers — even with a disclosure message (Will Heilpern, Advertising, Business Insider, 3-17-16). "Most online publishers use some form of native advertising — ads that look like news stories — to grow revenue. It is accepted practice to declare that this content is sponsored by a company, so that readers can differentiate between what is and is not news. However, the way in which many publishers declare these ads could be "complicit with deception" according to a new study by Bart Wojdynski, director of the digital media, attention, and cognition lab at the University of Georgia...Overall, only 20% of people in the study were aware that they were reading advertising, rather than objective, editorial content." Even as I copy that link, I see an ad below the credit for Big Island Cookies and Candy, a firm I received a gift from eons ago (they were yummy). It is NOT marked "advertising."
• Publishers Are Rethinking Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads (Sapna Maheshwari and John Herrman, NY Times, 10-30-16) "You see them everywhere, and maybe, sometimes, you click: those rows of links under web articles, often augmented with eye-catching photos and curiosity-stoking headlines about the latest health tips, celebrity news or ways to escape financial stress.Usually grouped together under a label like “Promoted Stories” or “Around the Web,” these links are often advertisements dressed up to look like stories people might want to read. They have long provided much-needed revenue for publishers and given a wide range of advertisers a relatively affordable way to reach large and often premium audiences...Recently Chandler Riggs, an actor on “The Walking Dead,” posted screenshots on Twitter of two such ads — “Young Actors Who Quietly Passed Away This Year” and “Young TV Star Found Dead” -- featuring a photo of his face....Readers are starting to express discontent."
• Everything You Need To Know About Sponsored Content (Chad Pollitt, Moz.com, 1-20-15 ) The Internet is experiencing a deluge of content, and many channels for content discovery are bloated...'With content marketing adoption rates so high, many brands are looking to native advertising to promote their content. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) defines native advertising as "paid ads that are so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they belong." According to the IAB, native advertising contains six different types of ad units: in-feed, promoted listings, in-ad with native element, paid search, recommendation widgets, and custom....They are actually an evolved version of what many marketers call advertorials, which have been around for decades. The biggest difference between the two is where the content resides in the customer buying journey. Advertorials are middle to bottom-of-the-funnel content.
..., sponsored articles strictly reside at the top of the funnel. Their purpose is to be helpful, entertaining, or both. Top-of-the-funnel content doesn't appear to be salesy and brand-centric to the reader. It's the rise of content marketing that helped move advertorials up the funnel. This helps brands become not just purveyors of goods and services, but a producer of ideas and a distributor of knowledge...The New York Times claims readers spend the same amount of time on sponsored articles as traditional news stories....BuzzFeed's entire business model is built around what it calls sponsored "listicles," a.k.a. sponsored articles.' A good overview of names and numbers of sponsored content and content marketing. Not yet regulated....
• What Is the Difference Between Sponsored Content and Native Advertising? (Shannon Porter, VI Marketing and Branding) 'When Google introduced its “Hummingbird” algorithm in 2013, keywords became not as important and content, based on the way people truly speak, became the new SEO darling. In layman’s terms, Hummingbird loves original, high quality content that is conversational in nature. As content marketing has continued to grow, so have the buzzwords associated with it. Two buzzwords I have heard recently are “sponsored content” and “native ads.”' Both are paid forms of content.
• =Consumers Can’t Tell the Difference Between Sponsored Content and Editorial (Ginny Marvin, Marketing Land, 9-9-15) In a new study, consumers identified native advertisements as articles a large percentage of the time.
• Content Marketing.

Is Free the Future?
"At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, James Moroney, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told Congress about negotiations he’d just had with the online retailer Amazon. The idea was to license his newspaper’s content to the Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic reader. 'They want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue,' Moroney testified. 'I get thirty per cent, they get seventy per cent. On top of that, they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device.' The idea was that if a Kindle subscription to the Dallas Morning News cost ten dollars a month, seven dollars of that belonged to Amazon, the provider of the gadget on which the news was read, and just three dollars belonged to the newspaper, the provider of an expensive and ever-changing variety of editorial content. The people at Amazon valued the newspaper’s contribution so little, in fact, that they felt they ought then to be able to license it to anyone else they wanted. Another witness at the hearing, Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, said that she thought the Kindle could provide a business model to save the beleaguered newspaper industry. Moroney disagreed. 'I get thirty per cent and they get the right to license my content to any portable device—not just ones made by Amazon?' He was incredulous. 'That, to me, is not a model... "
~ by Malcolm Gladwell, Priced to Sell: "Is Free the Future?" in the New Yorker

• How the FDA Manipulates the Media (Charles Seife, Scientific American, Oct. 2016) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been arm-twisting journalists into relinquishing their reportorial independence, our investigation reveals. Other institutions are following suit. "This kind of deal offered by the FDA—known as a close-hold embargo—is an increasingly important tool used by scientific and government agencies to control the behavior of the science press....But for [a particular] breach of secrecy, nobody outside the small clique of government officials and trusted reporters would have known that the journalists covering the agency had given up their right to do independent reporting....For example, the FDA assures the public that it is committed to transparency, but the documents show that, privately, the agency denies many reporters access—including ones from major outlets such as Fox News—and even deceives them with half-truths to handicap them in their pursuit of a story....By using close-hold embargoes and other methods, the FDA, like other sources of scientific information, are gaining control of journalists who are supposed to keep an eye on those institutions. The watchdogs are being turned into lapdogs."
• Embargo on press releases, rationale for (PLoS). Breaking an embargo is a journalistic no-no, with good reason.
• The Embargo Should Go (Vincent Kiernan, Inside Higher Education, 8-21-06). The system under which top journals share findings with reporters doesn't serve journalism, science or the public interest. Kiernan is the author of Embargoed Science
• Should Reporters Have Agreed To The Vertex Embargo? (Matthew Harper, Forbes, 6-24-14) A reporter's final thoughts on accepting an embargo agreement on writing about a new drug.
• Death to the Embargo (Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, 12-17-08)
• The embargo and business journalists (Sabrina Husain, Society of American Business Writers, May 2012)

"Brevity may be the soul of wit, or lingerie, or texting, or quail eggs, but all subjects are not the same. Efficiency of expression is in some realms a virtue and in some realms a vice. Brevity is certainly not the soul of news, if by news you mean more than information. 'The point' is not always easy. There is not always a 'takeaway.'" ~ Leon Wieselter, on the impoverishment of writers providing "content" for the new media, in Washington Diarist: Writers Have Become the New Proles in The New Republic

'Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.' ~ Mark Twain

"A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know." ~ Judge Murray Gurfein, Pentagon Papers case, June 17, 1971, as quoted by Freedom of the Press Foundation

The newspaper's job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. ~adapted from a longer quotation of Mr. Dooley, a character created by Finley Peter Dunne

" The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is."~ Nadine Gordimer

**Read Lane DeGregory's Letter to a Young Journalist (Gangrey, 9-16-13), to remind yourself how wonderful journalism can be. Looking back to when she started, Lane writes, "I wish I hadn’t thought I had to be so smart." And "Instead of trying to stay out of the story, I wish I had shared myself more."

"Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory."
—Bernard Ingham

War Reporting for Bloody Dummies (Chris Chafin, The Awl, 7-17-13). If you face danger, considering taking the all-day course offered by Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues (RISC) (dedicated to promoting the safety of journalists in combat zones-- training and equipping freelance journalists to treat life-threatening injuries on the battlefield. "RISC doesn't claim to be giving its students tools to keep safe. Rather, its main focus is on 'avoiding the four preventable deaths on the battlefield'...: tension pneumothorax (pressure changes in the body mainly due to explosions), hypothermia, suffocation due to a blocked airway, and hemorrhaging. "Blood is precious," she said,"and if we keep it inside ourselves, all of our systems work a lot better." Hence, learning to apply a tourniquet, etc.

Why I left news (Allyson Bird on quitting journalism because she was overworked and underpaid, Sticky Valentines). And Heather Mallick's response, who writes, "This is where I part company with Bird, who left because she didn’t want an all-consuming job. The definition of journalism is its demand for immersion."

"When the reporter in you is finished, then the writer in you has to lock the reporter out of the room. And when the writer in you is finished, then the editor in you has to lock the writer out of the room."
~ Samuel G. Freedman, quoting a colleague in Letters to a Young Journalist

"It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference."
~ news anchor Tom Brokaw

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say."
~ from Mark Twain's Notebook (1902-1903) as quoted on theMark Twain quotes site.

iReporter Tim Krause reports to CNN and Good Morning America from his porch on the Wisconsin flood of 2010, using Skype, video, and other multimedia technology

"We were misinformed. The Web didn't kill mediators. It made them stronger. The way a company makes big money on the Web is by skimming little bits of money off a huge number of transactions, with each click counting as a transaction. (Think trillions of transactions.) The reality of the web is hypermediation, and Google, with its search and search-ad monopolies, is the king of the hypermediators....

"Google's algorithm is based on reading 'links' as votes for content. Every time a website links to another website, Google reads that link as a vote.
The brilliance of the Google algorithm is its ability to figure out which votes should count more. But without those links, without those 'votes,'Google has nothing. What Google 'steals' from every website isn't the content - it's the links."
~ Nicholas Carr, Google in the Middle, Rough Cuts blog

"Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know 'If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?' To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke....

"With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem."
~Clay Shirky, in an interesting explanation of the revolution we're going through now, in Why iTunes is not a workable model for the newspaper business

". . .without a truly free and independent press, this 250-year-old experiment in self-government will not make it. I am no romantic about journalism. Some of my best friends are journalists. We are all fallen creatures, like everyone else. But I believe more fervently than ever that as journalism goes, so goes democracy."
~Bill Moyers in a speech to the National Conference on Media Reform

"To love what you do and feel that it matters — how could anything be more fun?"
~ Katharine Graham

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
~ Thomas Jefferson

"Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter — aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take "no" with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules — are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being."
~ Linda Ellerbee, And So It Goes

"Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description."
~ Anna Quindlen, in The New York Times (1993)